


Goodnight, Travel Well

by christchex



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Inspired by Orpheus and Eurydice (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:00:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24012493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/christchex/pseuds/christchex
Summary: The world exploded and turned to black. The desert sands beneath him gave little but were a comfortable bed compared to the cot he was used to. The sky above him was impossible in its brightness, even so far out into the desert. Nebulas could be seen, gaseous clouds of rainbows and dust hover over the horizon, which stood unimpeded in the distance. It was clearer, further, and more unreal than any sight Alex had ever seen. Death gave clarity to all things, apparently.Alex Manes dies in the desert. Alex Manes is given a second chance. Michael Guerin just needs to have some faith.An Orpheus & Eurydice AU.
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 33
Kudos: 90





	Goodnight, Travel Well

**Author's Note:**

> Mood music: just listen to the killers “good night travel well” on repeat until you hear me crying softly in the distance.

The world exploded and turned to black. The desert sands beneath him gave little but were a comfortable bed compared to the cot he was used to. The sky above him was impossible in its brightness, even so far out into the desert. Nebulas could be seen, gaseous clouds of rainbows and dust hover over the horizon, which stood unimpeded in the distance. It was clearer, further, and more unreal than any sight Alex had ever seen. Death gave clarity to all things, apparently.

There was no doubt in his mind. He was dead, taken out by enemy explosives despite his computer-based role. They weren’t even in an active zone, not at the time. It didn’t stop the explosion, didn’t stop the pain, didn’t stop his death. Death. It took less getting used to than he had assumed it would, if he ever thought about it at all. He honestly tried not to.

He allowed himself to lay in the sand, to enjoy the view up above. He had nowhere to go now, nothing to do, no responsibilities. He could take the time to relax. It was the quietest his mind had been since he was seventeen. The black expanse above him eased his mind, the streaks of color, the clouds and nebulae and the pinprick of stars lured him away. Away from the past, from explosions and anger and the idea that there were people he would never see again.

That hurt but in a distant way, an old pain that meant very little right now, with the stars above him and the sand below him.

Death brought clarity and death brought distance. Alex wasn’t numb, he wasn’t shut off from himself, from his feelings, the way he forced himself to be for the last few years. This wasn’t the lightness of hope or the darkness of shame, those two beasts he had been hurtling between for years. This simply was. He closed his eyes to the sight above him. He let himself feel, let the wind blow over him as his shoulders continued to relax into the sand. Distantly, he felt the tension drain from him, distantly because everything felt distant. The longer he was dead, the more distant he felt.

He was okay with that. Death brought clarity and death brought acceptance.

He barely thought about after death, thought plenty about death itself and its possibility, but afterward?

Even if he thought of it, he never would have imagined this.

Warm wind blew through his hair and Alex never felt so free. In the distance he heard a mournful howl. He paid it no mind. Every care he lived with was gone, every issue and every fear was consumed by the darkness around him. He started to hum, nothing more than a contented noise as the howling in the distance continued. Slowly, the hum grew until Alex was singing, voice clear into the night.

He opened his eyes as he sang into the dark expanse. Any remnant of life, of worry, of responsibility, or fear, was gone. He laid in the dark, a shell of what Alex Manes was in life, just nothing. He laid in the dark, empty. The howling stopped.

He was dead and surrounded by stars.

-

He shivered, cold cut through him as he gasped back into awareness. He knew, even then, that he didn’t wake, not into consciousness and not into the land of the living. The sky was too infinite, too bright, to be the desert sky he saw so often in life. The sky above him consumed him, consumed his thoughts, his feelings of terror and his feelings of home.

He had never looked at the sky before and thought  _ home _ , but here he was, some unknowable time after death thinking that.

“Maybe we really are space dust,” he said into the emptiness. That was a thing he used to say, a thing Michael used to say, as they laid in the bed of his truck and held each other into the night. Michael would point to the stars, point out the constellations, and Alex would keep his eyes fixed on Michael, on his smile and his bright eyes. He had rarely seen them that summer, back when Alex tried to cling to the only good thing left all while he felt that boy slip through his fingers.

The sky had seemed to swallow them, back when they were seventeen and clinging to each other in desperation.

It did so now, swallowing the horizon in every direction, even as Alex sat up. The sky was bright enough that he should have seen for miles on end, instead the edges seemed to fall until everything seemed like it was sky, everything except the little bit of desert beneath Alex’s legs.

His legs.

He remembered the first initial shock of pain, remembered the pain of being pinned down, the pain and the void of his right leg. He remembered the sun beating down on him for an eternity of a minute until his world had turned gray and then black. His leg shouldn’t have been there. He brought his hands to his legs, felt them whole, felt the jeans under his fingers and odd that he hadn’t realized he was wearing them before. He looked at his arms, bare, and then looked at his chest to see a worn black t-shirt that he hadn’t been able to find since his last trip to Roswell, before his deployment. He had been wearing it the last time he saw Michael, the last time they had argued and then they had fucked and Alex had gotten changed into fresh clothes. His shirt had been lost to the depths of Michael’s bed, to the tangle of sheets. Alex raised his hand and felt the length of his hair, out of regulation. He had gotten it cut after he left Roswell, at a barber shop just down the street from his base, barely an hour before he was due.

He remembered. He had wanted to look as much like the boy who had left as possible. He had wanted to show up at Michael’s door looking like the boy he fell in love with. He had wanted to tell him that this was it, his last deployment before his contract was up. He wanted to ask if there was something, someone, waiting for him if he left. Michael had answered the door already angry, already bitter.

Alex never asked that night.

He looked around at the endless night, bright stars cast a shadow behind him, small and then growing, as if to highlight the path he should take, the shadow an arrow to point his gaze. He looked down at where his body met the sand, the shadow never touched his body. He stood. The shadow didn’t follow him. Instead it continued to elongate until it stretch to the distance and figures emerged from the shadows. They were indistinguishable, barely more than a black-on-black-on-stars outline.

He took a step closer, careful to keep to the shadow path, which seemed hard and firm beneath his feet, unlike the shifting sands around him. He moved closer until the figures sharpened into features, to a king on a throne and a man before him, hair a mess of wild curls, mess made worse by the frantic way he ran his fingers through his hair.

“What?” Alex breathed his question into the night.

The night answered back. “You know the stories.” The voice was warm, amused.

Alex looked around to find the voice and saw nothing, just the King and Michael in the distance.

“He is making his bargain,” the voice said again, closer this time. Alex startled when he found someone next to him, dark and beautiful, with eyes that reminded him of a warm spring day. The Queen, for her gown seemed too fine for any other title and the flowers and bones in her hair woven together made a crown more regal than any made of silver or gold. “You do know the stories?” The Queen asked, a small smile on her face. Her lips were painted a green so dark it looked black.

Alex nodded before he answered aloud. “Yes,” he whispered, eyes back on Michael. “For love, he risked the underworld to sneak her back. He was caught. So moved by the music he played, he was allowed to lead her back to life. At a price.”

“Yes,” the Queen agreed. “At a price.”

“He can’t play,” Alex told her. “Not anymore, not after my dad.”

“He can’t,” she agreed again.

“He can’t make the bargain,” Alex said as he watched Michael fall to his knees before the King.

“He can’t make  _ that _ bargain,” the Queen replied, “he has other gifts to give. He has stories, and truths, and the beautiful thing that he is building underground.” Alex tore his eyes away from Michael to look at the Queen in confusion. “It wasn’t the music that swayed me, and thus swayed my husband, it was the love.”

She smiled at him, another small smile that was barely an upturned corner but it seemed to make her face glow.

“Will it be enough? It was you who convinced your husband the first time, and here you are with me.”

“You doubt that he loves you enough?”

“More like, I think he loves an idea of me. One that is long gone.”

She looked at him, Alex could feel her stare on his face, could feel the weight of her judgement. She seemed to hold the universe in her, gaze heavy as the world on Atlas’ shoulders. Her small smile turned sad, understanding.

“It can be a hard thing, to be loved for what you were.” Her heavy gaze turned from Alex to her husband on his throne, head bent towards Michael still on his knees. “Harder still to know if you are loved as you are.” Alex made a weak noise in agreement. “He is of the stars, same as my husband. He is steady, the light of a star far away that has glowed for a lifetime and will continue to until it burns out. We still see it long after we’re dead. You are made of earth, where all things grow, where I was made.” She moved away from Alex, towards the King and the empty throne besides him. “Let us see if he loves you as my starlight loves me.”

Alex watched, unable to move as the Queen bent her head to whisper in her husband’s ear. He smiled.

“A story then,” the King said, voice low and creaking, a chill down Alex’s spine. “Your story as payment, and the rules of old: you must trust he is where you left him and you must not look.”

Alex watched as Michael’s stiffen. Alex’s shoulders dropped.

Trust.

Michael had to  _ trust _ that Alex would be there, be where Michael left him, as if Alex wasn’t constantly running to somewhere else.

“You have to trust him too,” the Night whispered, the Queen nowhere to be seen. “You cannot sway him. Your words will not reach him and your touch will feel like the wind and nothing more.”

“He won’t,” Alex said, stubborn, into the night. “He won’t, I haven’t given him a reason to in the last eight years and he hasn’t given me one either.”

“You have to trust,” the Night said again, amusement obvious in its tone.

“And if I can’t?”

“Then you stay.”

He took a look around at the desert, the sky above him glowing iridescent and otherworldly and the sand moving as if blown by the wind while the air sat still. Could he stay here forever?

“That’s a choice you have to make,” the Queen said, as she appeared before him. “Follow him and trust, or don’t.”

“Do I have to choose now?”

“No. But this is as much a test for you as it is for him. Then road will be long. It will be difficult. It will hurt you both.”

Alex looked at Michael again, still on his knees before the King, this time in thanks. He watched as Michael stood, head resolutely facing the King and nowhere else. Alex could feel the strain, could feel Michael fighting his instincts to look, to observe, to assess. Alex tried not to think that, maybe, Michael’s instinct was to look for him.

“You both have a question to answer at the end of this, do you know yours?” The Queen asked as she took Alex’s hand in hers. Her hands were cold, the way his mother’s hands were after a day in the garden in early spring, back before she left for good.

“Do I think he loves me now, not just what I once was?”

She nodded. They moved closer and Alex could finally see Michael in details. He wore his work clothes, the one t-shirt that was once white but now it was grease-stained with holes in the neck, his jeans that were worn but still allowed for stretch and movement. His left hand was balled into a tight fist, but Alex could see where his pinky and ring finger didn’t bend. He looked everything and nothing like the last time Alex saw him, curled up asleep in his Airstream, arms straining to reach someone who wasn’t there.

She moved him so that he was at Michael’s back, close enough that he could raise his arm out straight and his fingers would graze his back. He tried it, lifted his arm to try and touch him, just once.

The Queen shook her head. “As if you were the wind at his back,” she said and Alex lowered his arm.

The King rose from his throne and moved close to Michael, so that his pale fingers clasped his shoulder as he leaned in to whisper something into Michael’s ear. Alex could see Michael shiver. The king pulled away. Michael nodded.

“Go,” the King said. Alex tried to hold in his shudder. “Go and walk the path.” The King smiled, had been smiling the whole time Alex realized. His smile seemed cruel in that moment like the King was mocking them and their attempts to escape death; though, a second later it seemed kind, welcoming, comforting. “Remember, do not look back or he is lost.”

Maybe that was the point. It was what one made of it. It was constant. It just was.

Michael took a step forward. Alex cast his unsure gaze at the Queen. She laughed, a twinkle more than a sound, and shooed her hands, like a mother would to her underfoot child. Michael took another step. Alex took his first.

They walked toward the stars.

**Author's Note:**

> So I started this roughly forever ago, made no process and then promptly wrote about 5/8ths of this fic at once. I really don't know if I will ever write the full thing. I may leave it here. I don't know how much energy or interest I'll have. But, I hope you enjoy it anyway.


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